Modern software user interfaces have display features designed to offer a user the opportunity to choose one or more values from a continuous range. An example of a type of interface tool is known as a slider. As shown in FIG. 1, a slider 100 looks like an old style radio tuning face with a bar showing the full range of possible values and an indicator showing the value currently chosen. Specifically, FIG. 1 illustrates a cluster of sliders 100a-100d controlling multiple variables used to render an object.
Sliders can also be used to indicate a value range within a context. For example, FIG. 2 illustrates a range slider 200, as used in Microsoft Word®, that shows the active region of a document within its overall context, i.e., the width of the page. The context of the slider (i.e., the available domain for the user's use or choice) can often be scaled onto the user's display. It may, however, be the case that the granularity of the selection to be made from the available range is too fine or too small to be visualized in the user interface.
For example, if a software company is examining sales figures over the life of a product, the user could examine the data using a slider 300 such as illustrated in FIG. 3. In this example, the slider reflects sales figures ranging from 1995, (the year the product was introduced) to the present. The user has the capability to then choose any period or range, e.g., between Jan. 1, 2001 and Apr. 1, 2001, to more closely examine and analyze. The slider 300 begins to exhibit a severe weakness in this context. As shown in FIG. 3, the selected range is barely discernable because the selected range is too narrow or small compared to the overall range, which is extensive. The above-noted deficiency is exacerbated when several ranges are selected.
FIG. 4 illustrates an example of a user selecting more than one range 402 comparing the sales figures from Jan. 1, 1995 to Apr. 1, 1995 with the sales figures 404 from Jan. 1, 2005 to Apr. 1, 2005. The visualization of the duration 406 between the two ranges is as important to the user as the selected ranges. For example, measuring the duration may be critical to evaluate total sales of a product from its introduction to the present. As described and demonstrated by FIGS. 3 and 4, a traditional slider is limited in the discernable detail it can display. Thus, the clarity to illustrate relationships between selected short ranges would be difficult because of the difficulty to capture small ranges of values in such a broad range of overall values.
To cure this problem, it is possible to display the selected ranges on separate sliders. However, this proposed solution does not allow for the display of the duration 406 between the selected ranges because the at least two selected ranges would be on separate sliders. Therefore, a user cannot change the visible window on a particular slider so that he/she can access other values or the full extent of the domain (e.g., the sales over the complete period, 1995 to 2006) by simply moving the selected range along the slider. Thus, separation onto distinct sliders is inconvenient and does not facilitate the full display of a domain. Moreover, a user also faces the challenge of a selected range potentially exceeding the visible portion of the domain. For example, if a one hundred year segment is chosen then the display may be too small to show small segments (e.g., 3-5 years). In all of these variants of linear sliders, the context of the selection and thus the visual value of the slider is severely diminished or lost.
Therefore, there is a need for a user interface that allows for the display of information, including but not limited to ranges of values, without the loss of detail, context or accessibility due to lack of area on the user interface.